Heyyyy, Boo Boo!

10/14/08

I must say, since I left the midwest, the weather has been near perfect. Sure, it’s rained from time to time, but it’s always managed to be sunny when I needed it to. I had anticipated having a number of days that I would be confined to the van or the nearest coffee shop. While i’m not complaining, I had sort of counted on some of that down time to keep up on reading, guitar playing, blogging…

Apparently Jackson really is in a hole. I hadn’t realized it arriving in the dark but the town is literally surrounded my mountains.

Would you believe this is a ski town?

I walked around the town for a while, stopping in the camera shop to pick up some film, then took off, anxious to see The Tetons in the daylight.

My friends Colin and Elizabeth had informed me that if The Black Hills, The Rockies, and The Tetons were related, The Black Hills would be the grandfather, The Rockies, the father, and The Tetons, the son. It’s not difficult to see why, because the peaks on The Tetons look as if they were just formed yesterday and have had no time to erode.

These are the grandest Tetons I have ever seen.

After pulling off at a few viewpoints, it was time for the main event – Yellowstone National Park.

This is of course the granddaddy of all the national parks. The one I’ve been waiting for. The one that all other national parks bow before. The one…ok you get the idea.

Entering Yelowstone, I was overwhelmed with images of the wonders that lay ahead. Boiling mud pools, spouting geysers, colorful hot springs, and new wild life consumed my thoughts.

Ok. Fine. I’ll admit it. Images of Yogi Bear on his quest to steal pick-i-nick baskets found their way into my head too…

The first stop was the West Thumb Geysey Basin.

The acidity of some of the springs here is enough to burn through boots.

The temptation to post too many pictures here is great. You’ll just have to visit the Flickr page to see them all.

The next major stop on the map was Old Faithful. However, an impuse to turn into Kepler Cascade overcame me, so I had to investigate.

It turned out to be a good decision for a couple of reasons. First, after risking life, limb and equipment once again, I got some nice shots from the bottom of the falls.

After making the climb back up to take some shots from above, I met a girl named Tina. She seemed interested in the fact that I had climbed all the way down just to take some pictures and we struck up a conversation.

As it turns out she was on a roadtrip from Texas up to Seattle with her companion Whiskey.

Fellow travelers

As we were both headed in the same direction through Yellowstone, we decided it would be fun to caravan. Upon arrival to Old Faithful, she was smart enough to bring some bread and cheese to snack on since the geyser only goes off every 90 minutes on average.

We continued up to Mammoth Springs that night thinking that there were springs available to bathe in, but as it turns out, they’re spewing out sulpher like the rest of them. She ended up joining me for dinner later, which consisted of peanut butter and jelly, soup, and beans and rice. Seeing as she was sleeping in her pickup truck, with Whiskey, I offered up the top bunk of the Vanagon, but Whiskey wanted to go home to the truck.